“We are proceeding with a core group of fifty plus engineers, managers and support staff,” Mike Gold, Bigelow Aerospace’s director of Washington operations and business growth, said in an emailed response to questions from Space News ...

“We had hoped that by 2014 or 2015 that America would again be able to fly its own astronauts. Unfortunately, the prospect of domestic crew transportation of any kind is apparently going to occur years after the first BA 330 could be ready,” Gold wrote. “For both business and technical reasons, we cannot deploy a BA 330 without a means of transporting crew to and from our station, and the adjustment to our employment levels was necessary to reflect this reality.

“If anything, Bigelow Aerospace has been suffering from its own early success, and we’re years ahead of where the rest of the industry is.”

The BA 330 is an inflatable space station module. "The BA 330 can function as an independent space station, or several BA 330 habitats can be connected together in a modular fashion to create an even larger and more capable orbital space complex," according to the Bigelow web site. It can hold six occupants for a long-term visit.

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Stephen C. Smith

Stephen C. Smith and his wife left California in June 2009 to move to the Space Coast so they could be part of America's future. He is a long-time advocate of space exploration, settlement and commerce, and has been active in several space advocacy organizations.
Stephen has extensive experience in political consulting and advocacy. He is registered non-partisan; his political opinions are his own.
He graduated from the University of California Riverside with an A.B. in Political Science, and has a Masters Degree in Public Administration from California State University Long Beach.
You can e-mail Stephen at spacekscblog@gmail.com.